Notes Very, very rough this one. I was lost for inspiration for a while. I think I’ve reached the point where I print out everything done so far and start editing and shuffling around chapter orders.
The bookshop is now my bitch. On returning from lunch the owner was even more horrified than his assistant. It’s possible my amiable demeanour and calm manner perturbed him more than a loon screaming about theft would have.
Their print on demand library contains a lot of recent history stuff, and they printed me many free copies whilst I went to lunch. The down side is that I returned home carting more books than I had left with.
Sally is taken by Sounds of Soldiers. “Who knew my boyfriend was so good looking.” she giggles.
“Yeah, but look in his eyes. Don’t they seem a little dead to you? Like there’s not really anything behind them.”
“You’re spoiling my fun. But you’re right, this isn’t the face of a man who could impregnate a sexy spy whilst nuclear bombs are going off.” She starts flicking through the book, “Does he mention that?”
“As I didn’t I’d bet he doesn’t.”
“I think I’ll compare the book to your blog’s archive. Am I bad for not reading it all already?”
I kiss her forehead, “Hardly. I haven’t looked at it for a while either.”
So we have a quiet night in reading. Except when Sally finds something to giggle about. “Whoever’s done this has tried to simplify the continuity for thicker readers.” she points out at one point, “He’s changed the names of the guys in Apt to match the ones you travelled down country with. And did you know you had a torrid on again off again romance with a resistance leader called Isabelle?”
“Really? You’d think I’d remember stuff like that. When I find the person who released this I’m going to mock them soundly.”
“Not beat them to withing an inch of their lives?”
“Not my style any more.”
There are a lot of histories of the war- specific and general- and I have a representative sample of them. Only one of them isn’t a print on demand. None of them is going to be entirely correct, but I should get some new perspectives on my experience.
I go looking for the Battle of the Mediterrannean in all the books. Two are dedicated completely to it, the rest give it a long chapter. None of them agree on the details, beyond the date and the sea it happened in. The time of the first explosion varies over three hours. I don’t know which one is nearest to correct, and I was there. There is even more dischord over whose the bombs were and how they were delivered. The French, the Americans, the British, renegade Americans, Iran. It seems everyone had a hand in the fireworks. The truth, or something a lot closer to it than this, will out eventually I guess. But for now everyone has their own conspiracy theory.
I should get a pad and start comparing the different claims. My own take is pretty much what Marianne was told the following day- that elements in the US Navy had taken matters into their own hands and stopped the imminent bloodletting. “This will all make sense one day.”
“But not right now? It’s still too soon?”
“Yeah. Nowhere near enough perspective. And the government’s haven’t started opening up their files. There isn’t even a US government to have files, as far as I can tell. The Battle of the Meds going to remain an enigma for quite the while. My head’s beginning to hurt.”
“Let’s go to bed. The past can wait for another day.”